Spencer: The Inquisition

Over at Lucia’s she wrote a post saying I had banged the Godwin’s Law “gong” by comparing the PNAS skeptic list paper as “stasi-esque”. For people that don’t know, the Stasi were the secret police of East Germany, post WWII, and post Nazism. So Stasi-esque doesn’t qualify for Godwins Law. They were famous for making lists of people and their associations, to use later for what could only be described as nefarious purposes. Their list making (like the skeptic list used for the PNAS paper) is what is the parallel here.

As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.

We don’t need the negativism that is being fostered elsewhere.

Dr. Spencer has some interesting comments in his post below. – Anthony

===================================================

The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”.

Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists who have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 20 years to find every potential connection between fossil fuel use and changes in nature.

After all, nature does not cause change by itself, you know.

The study lends a pseudo-scientific air of respectability to what amounts to a black list of the minority of scientists who do not accept the premise that global warming is mostly the result of you driving your SUV and using incandescent light bulbs.

There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.

As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.

But those scientific studies did not address all of the alternative explanations. They couldn’t, because we do not have the data to investigate them. The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade.

I’m sorry, but in science a presupposition is not “evidence”.

Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true.

So, since we have no other evidence to go on, let’s pin the rap on humanity. It just so happens that’s the position politicians want, which is why politics played such a key role in the formation of the IPCC two decades ago.

The growing backlash against us skeptics makes me think of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, which started in the 12th Century. Of course, no one (I hope no one) will be tried and executed for not believing in anthropogenic climate change. But the fact that one of the five keywords or phrases attached to the new PNAS study is “climate denier” means that such divisive rhetoric is now considered to be part of our mainstream scientific lexicon by our country’s premier scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences.

Surely, equating a belief in natural climate change to the belief that the Holocaust slaughter of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis never occurred is a new low for science as a discipline.

The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.

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196 thoughts on “Spencer: The Inquisition”

The blogger co-author of the PNAS paper has apparently received an email from someone on the Stasi’s list. So I guess even folks on the Stasi’s list don’t like the idea of the blogger’s list.http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/

I was enjoying the article until you slipped in a knock on the Catholic church. Please exercise your skepticism as diligently here as you do toward climate change. If you would prefer to stop believing what “everyone knows” and educate yourself about the Inquisition, I recommend this site (with which I have no affiliation):http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3481&Itemid=48
I’m sure you understand how frustrating it can be when political maneuvering has shut down the truth, and lies begin to be repeated without any questioning.

So let me get this straight… for decades government has thrown billions at climate scientists who seek to find links between human behviour and global warming, who inevitably publish their results. This paper miraculously announces that the weight of publication numbers favours those who support this hypothesis.
This is remarkable!

Should the predictions of doom be found to be wanting, it will give credibility to the “deniers”, and hence to the term, with the (undesirable) side effect that the phrase “holocaust denier” will lose a lot of its negative connotation.
I hope they understand this, and are happy to accept that consequence.

I completely agree with you Dr Spencer. Could I add that the term “convinced” is a very subjective term. As in “Are the scientists convinced that CO2 and only CO2 are the cause of the current warming” or that “Scientists are convinced that with current data, CO2 is probably the cause”. How convinced are they and of what exactly? Does this mean that their minds will never be changed even if evidence presents itself (Scientific heresy).
I am viewing this PNAS paper and the following discussions as an attempt to turn back the clock to when the team was winning the debate with the public. They need a do-over. LOL

I noticed that one “Kafbst” was indignant over a supposed slight against the Catholic Church. I was born and raised a Catholic until I could read and understand history. The Catholic Church is the farthest thing from Christianity save, maybe, Islam. The Church in no manner follows the teachings of Christ or the Bible. Since you’re so fond of recommending reading, I’d advise you to read William Manchester’s “A World Lit Only by Fire.” In my opinion he is kind to Catholic readers when detailing the pedophilia and and incestuous behavior of Catholic hierarchy at the end of the Dark Ages, which, and I speak from firsthand knowledge, still continues in many forms today.
REPLY: I’m allowing this post, as it replies to one already approved, but no more discussion of religious issues. All further posts of this nature will not be approved – A

Perhaps if the Stassi/Holocaust/religion connotations are on the nose, we would be better off comparing this with McCarthy? I had better check to see if there is a sceptic hiding under my bed*!
* In reality this would be tricky, given that it is a waterbed.

Bulldust —- Two thumbs up.
Pay more in taxes to the government, so scientists paid by government grants can pretend to control the weather. What could go wrong with that.
Hey I wonder why they don’t show where all those non-approved scientists are wrong? Sounds a lot like stacking the deck. And here I thought all we wanted was the truth.

Just like the Inquisition was a group of fascists that hijacked a good and tolerant religion during the plague- and famine-ridden devastation of the Dark Ages, so it is with climate science, where true science is being (I like to think attempting to be-) hijacked by the CAGW warm-earthers. The inquisitors were very anti-Christian people who persecuted normal believers in the name of the church.
I find it so fascinating that the high priest, Gore, has no degree in science, but in Divinity, and his minion, Pachauri, has a degree in coal steam engine trains.
I find it interesting, also, that the warm-earthers’ methods have and will cause worldwide famines, perhaps causing a second Dark Age, as the earth laughs, and cools.

Given Prall’s self described job description, I’m as every bit qualified to discuss climate science and the scientists involved as he is in that we essentially hold the same position at our places of employment. I don’t happen to use my employers website to further my personal agenda, but I’d probably be more appropriate if I did.
Anthony, the obvious insult to the intelligence of not only you, Dr. Spencer, and the rest of the list of almost 500, but to the general public also, warrants a response that probably won’t be associated with roses and sunshine. The reason there is a mechanism in the human response that evokes anger is because civility doesn’t get the point across. It is sad, but nonetheless, true.
I wrote PNAS about their standards, I got a “thanks for calling” response several hours later. Any person involved in IT would have (as Prall purports to be, I have no reason to doubt him.) taken the extra effort to ensure his/her data reflected reality. It is what we do. From data to tables to communications, it is what people like me do. I get asked for reports on a regular basis, it would be simple for me to change the outcome of the reports, but it isn’t what I do, nor should anyone else in my profession engage in. Mr. Prall’s efforts were so comprehensive that he actually included a dead person on his list. Perhaps that wasn’t the criteria, but then if that were to be true, how far back does he go?
All that said, and I could go on, in deference to you, I’ll say, 🙂
Cheers.

Might is right? Or is right might?
I think we should get the data of what’s really happening on tv more. Maybe a showing of The Great Global Warming Swindle in the U.S. would help turn the tide even harder against the great global warming monstrosity.

Bulldust says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:23 pmI had better check to see if there is a sceptic hiding under my bed*!
There isn’t because there isn’t any room left with that missing Kevin Trenberth heat and that eroded Arctic ice volume hiding there.

Re: Kafbst
I didn’t see a knock against the Catholic Church. Simply likening the current situation to the medieval inquisitions undertaken by the Catholic Church. I read the article you linked to and even it agrees that the Catholic church believed heretics to be lost sheep who had to confess and atone for their sins. The point is they felt the need to go out and try and convert anyone who disagreed with them to their way of thinking. It disappoints me that people still think that behaviour is excusable today.

Red herring, not Green.
Making lists of folks who sign lists does not free up our publicly funded data. It doesn’t matter whether 6,000, 60,000, 600,000 or 6,000,000 people sign up on his lists.
Never mind. I’ll just keep reading ChiefIO’s blog and WUWT and skip this guy.

“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
Do you mean to say that the lack of cloud cover could warm the planet. That’s crazy talk. (SIC)

“Not surprisingly, the study finds that the skeptical scientists have fewer publications or are less credentialed than the marching army of scientists ”
Cause, or effect? We have direct evidence written by the hand of the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood of Alarmists indicating there has been a concerted effort to lock out skeptics from being published.
And can anyone, as a skeptic, imagine successfully passing 4 years of higher education in the current environment, let alone graduating with honors?
Hopefully the next kristallnacht will just be a snow fall – in June.

Or is right might?
“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”—-James Madison.
I think what he was saying was that right is might. It certainly is instruction for the laymen of this world(that choose to govern themselves). I really don’t give a darn(tip to A) about what Mr. Prall, et. al. feels about it or not. 🙂

bubbagyro says:
Sorry to spoil your fun but Gore dropped out of two different Graduate Schools; Business and Divinity. So he doesn’t have a divinity degree. But he does have a PhD in hypocrisy.
Bulldust says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:23 pm
While his methodology may be suspect Senator McCarthy was proven correct after the fall of the Soviet Union. I doubt the AGW crowd will have the same satisfaction either near term or long term

“The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.”
Reading the comments section over at the U.K. Telegraph certainly shows a “dwindling public belief”.
What I also noted over at PNAS was, “The authors declare no conflict of interest.”

It’s summer in the N. Hemisphere, and the Warmist Inquisition is feeling it’s oats.
Come November, there will be much egg on the faces of the Judges.
The public will see to that, having been decried as ‘unwashed’ by the court.

bubbagyro says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:27 pm
“……I find it interesting, also, that the warm-earthers’ methods have and will cause worldwide famines, perhaps causing a second Dark Age, as the earth laughs, and cools.”
I find it disheartening. We’ve learned nothing. A few of us have, but most, no. The Farmers Almanac is usually correct in predicting the next few years of climate. Does one think they’ve been measuring the CO2 emissions all these years? But in the end, no, they won’t usher in a second Dark Age. There is too many people like you and me to allow it. I just wish they’d see the waste they are causing. While we concentrate on CO2 and we get in forms of advances the I-whatever, we could be focusing on something worthwhile. (for A) 🙂

btw where is the second Penn State report on Michael Mann which was due weeks ago?
22 June: WaPo: Rosalind Helderman: Judge stays Cuccinelli’s U-Va. climate change subpoena, sets Aug. 20 court date
The university faced a July 26 deadline for complying with the subpoena but Circuit Court Judge Cheryl V. Higgins stayed the demand after the university petitioned the judge asking her to set Cuccinelli’s inquiry aside. ..
Such a stay is common practice and was formalized as part of a scheduling order that has been in the works for some time (the judge seems to have signed it June 10) but has been circulated to lawyers just this week. The order, agreed to by both sides, also sets a schedule for the circuit court’s consideration of the university’s petition, culminating in the courtroom showdown of oral arguments on Aug. 20http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/06/an_albermarle_county_judge_has.html

There is limited value in comparing the length of lists of authors. The IPCC process with structured tasks was bound to lead to a rush of papers pre-2007, mainly by those supporting AGW. The playing field was not level, with huge grants from groups like energy companies going to AGW studies and virtually nil to others in opposition.
There is more value in comparing the relative weights of wisdom, breadth and philosophy of science in the AGW group versus those who question it.
Climate studies are quite new and narrow; some are known to be less than perfect as noted by Dr Wegman. Many are written by relatively young researchers. Points such as this are important to those older, wiser scientists who typically report less formally than by peer-reviewed publication. Often, they have retired from active writing of formal papers. The fact that the reporting is informal does not diminish its value. The value lies in the content.
It is quite disappointing to see the NAS taking this divisive line. It’s not a necessary or essential part of their charter.

Lucia says:
June 22, 2010 at 7:17 pm
“Yep. I screwed up on the Stazi bit; my readers all got me on that one! But the yellow badges did bang the gong.”
I thought it was “on the money”. You could have gone the Santa Claus route…….
“He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, he’s gonna find out……..”

Well, the AGW act a bit like Joe Btfsplk, Al Capp’s rain cloud character. Since they mostly deny any role for the sun in climate changes, adopt a smiley sun as the mascot of the sceptics, maybe with a wicked wink. Ridicule is always the most effective weapon.

This comment may be a little too long, even though, in my mind, it is not necessarily off-topic. It contains translations I did in 2003 from the original German of some essays that relate to political transformations from the conservative and moderate to radical extremism. Transformations like that are by no means a monopoly of NationalSocialism.
The last footnote quoted in the following illustrates the extent of the pervasiveness of Stasi surveillance in the GDR, that is, communist East Germany.
–Begin quote–
One of the essays in Politics of Transformation is by Bernd-A. Rusinek, Ph. D., appointed by the Commission for History to investigate the Schneider/Schwerte case. In his essay “From Schneider to Schwerte, Anatomy of a Change” (p. 143) Bernd-A. Rusinek explores the question of how it is possible for any intellectual in Academe to align himself with the radical ideology of the Nazis. One example that he uses to give an assessment of the attitudes of intellectuals in 1945 is that of Gottfried Benn, who was involved in Nazism on account of his essays on “selective breeding” (of humans, of course!).
A translation of an excerpt from the observations by Bernd-A. Rusinek in that respect is as follows:
“[Gottfried Benn] experienced the “second phase of his fame” in post-war times. His autobiography “Double-Life — The life experiences of an intellectual,” was published in 1949. The author declared himself in that to be contemptuous of the historical world and to be a theoretician of double-life. That the integrity of a person were a questionable matter; that our cultural cycle had begun with dual-figures: Sphinx figures, centaurs, dog-headed gods; that he now finds himself at the culmination of leading a double life. And, with slogans that remind one of the factual discourse of the ‘twenties, Benn delivers a vade mecum [sic] for perpetrators and collaborators. “Double-life, in the theoretical meaning claimed, and as executed by me,” so Benn, “is a deliberate splitting of the personality, a systematic, tendentious,” an “inner self” with its own convictions, and an outer self that gives the applicable contemporary system what is due to the system. About the main maxim of his “Ptolemarian” Benn explains:
“Recognize the situation — that is, adapt to the situation, camouflage yourself, no convictions at any price (…) — other than that, go calmly along with convictions, world views, syntheses in any direction of the compass, if institutions and offices demand it so, only: keep your head free, it must always leave space for [objectively philosophical?] constructs.”
People managed to live with such attitudes after 1945 — once they escaped from denazification and the court rooms — without being embarrassed at all. [p. 167]
Jochen Hörisch, professor for Germanistic and media analysis at the University of Mannheim, made a contribution to Politics of Transformation, through an essay titled “Arrest the usual people under suspicion, Sinister Dimensions in the Cases Schwerte/Schneider, de Man, Jauß.” In that essay he writes about three left-liberal and much-honoured researchers of literature of the ’60s and ’70s (Hans Schneider/Schwerte amongst them) who were given international recognition and who, over and above that, shared another terrible aspect: they were Nazi-collaborators or even members of the SS terror-organization. The last two paragraphs of his essay state:
“…Artists are — semi-exceptions like Storm and Fontane, Böll and Lenz may confirm the rule — with respect to demands for moral integrity, significantly inferior to the average population. 4 As a rule they are more egotistic, egocentric, narcissistic, arrogant, and ruthless than the likes of us.
In short: the moral integrity of artists and theoreticians is a bonus-achievement that hasn’t got anything to do with the internal constitution of their artistic or theoretical works. There is a theory, which well may be frequently viewed with hostility on account of that, because it comprises and expresses this simple insight: the deconstruction. In short: de Man is the theoretician amongst the three literature researchers that were discussed here, who after 1945 didn’t pick up anymore on the traditionalist rhetoric of the relationship between the beautiful, truth and good. That makes his writings more interesting and informative than those of Schwerte and Jauß.” [p. 195]
The clincher comes in the footnote indicated in the first paragraph of that quote shown above. It should dispel the illusions of anyone who thinks that intellectual prostitution is an aspect of Academe that existed only during the totalitarian regime of the Nazis. Here is the translation of the footnote:
_________________
4 Joachim Walther: “In the Stinking Underground” – The GDR-author Joachim Walther about the total control of the GDR-literature through the Stasi [State Security Service]; in: Der Spiegel 39/1996, p. 231: “The astoundingly high readiness especially by authors to collaborate with the State Security Service can be explained only with the capability of intellectuals to ennoble historic-philosophically even the betrayal of close friends.” Of the 123 co-workers of the central management of the GDR-Authors-Association, only 19 were not connected with the Ministry of the State Security Service. 49 had become stoolies for the Stasi, as opposed to 17 who were under surveillance. And again, of the 19 members of the directorate, 12 had sold themselves to the Stasi — amongst them, naturally, the Association President Hermann Kant. But the various GDR districts too were under the control of the IM [sic, I assume what is meant by that is the Ministry of the State Security Service; it is not clear whether IM stands for Minister of the Interior or that of the State Security Service, or whether the terms are interchangeable. —WHS]: In Halle, 39 authors who were members of the association opposed 14 unofficial co-workers.” (K. Welzel: The Literature of the GDR-Turning Point, Siss Mannheim 1997, p. 57).
—end quotes—
The quotes, in their original formatting, are accessible at http://fathersforlife.org/culture/ideology.htm
That web page contains a discussion of radical extremist ideologies. That discussion is definitely off-topic here, but I feel that the observations quoted above are not. Intellectual prostitution of moral integrity and the collaboration of intellectuals with totalitarian regimes or ideologies is far more often the rule than the exception.
Regardless of the sector of Academe, the sciences or social morals that is involved, totalitarianism, by any other name, still is totalitarianism. It seems that, whether totalitarianism affects sociology or the hard sciences, it always involves an all-pervasive loss of objectivity.

22 June: Scientific American: David Biello: Experto Crede: Climate Expertise Lacking among Global Warming Contrarians
A majority of scientists who dispute global warming lack the climatological expertise to do so
A mathematician in Alberta, an oceanographer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a darling of climate change contrarians share a rare distinction in a new analysis of expertise about global warming. The three scientists are the only ones, on the basis of their work, to appear on two lists: both among researchers who are convinced of the scientific evidence for climate change and on a roll of those who are unconvinced.
Gordon Swaters of the University of Alberta, Carl Wunsch of M.I.T., and climate scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville all qualify for both lists thanks to various efforts to canvas the scientific community for those who dissent from the consensus on climate change as well as efforts to build that consensus…
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford, who worked on the new analysis, admits that it is born of frustration with “climate deniers,” such as physicist Freeman Dyson or geologist Ian Plimer, being presented as “equally credible” to his peers and granted “equal weight” as science assessments from the IPCC or U.S. National Academy of Sciences, both of which ascribe ongoing climate change to increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activities. “We wanted to ask by objective measures, ‘Who publishes the bulk of the new science in the refereed literature and gets cited the most: those who accept anthropogenic global warming or those who deny it?'” Schneider says…ETChttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-expertise-lacking-among-global-warming-contrarians

So what is the point of this paper? Isn’t it more or less a formal ‘appeal to authority’? Is it the authors contention that, since he knows more scientists that believe in AGW than don’t, AGW must be true?
I can just imagine the authors sitting in front of Congress holding a folded piece of paper saying, “we have here a list of known agents who do not accept the tenets of AGW.” I can see McCarthy and Goebbels nodding in approval. That and after he session I expect some of them to point at a skeptic and shout, “He is not of the body!”
Oddly enough 10,000 scientists saying they believe in something does not make it true.
Consider poor old Ed Parker (discoverer of Solar Wind) who was told by numerous scientists that the tenets of astrophysics held that, “anybody who knows anything about this subject knows that space is empty”.

pure advocacy by CBS…as usual….
CBS: Charles Cooper: Climate Change Researchers: Not all Expertise is Equal
The report also alludes to the media presentation of both sides in the climate change debate, which it says has helped foster public misunderstanding…
A recent Gallup survey carried out for Yale University found that 40% of Americans believe scientists remain of two minds about global warming. (At the same time 68% favored the idea of an international treaty binding the United States to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 90% by the year 2050.)
After unusually heavy snowfall earlier this year, some Republican politicians said the weather pattern undermined the argument for global warming. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin described studies supporting the existence of global warming as snake oil …http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20008404-501465.html

“both sides” from the media again!
21 June: Deutsche Welle: Sandra Petersmann: Global Media Forum tackles ‘greatest challenge of the 21st century’
In his introductory speech at this year’s Global Media Forum, Werner Hoyer, Germany’s Deputy Foreign Minister, emphasized that climate change is not just a scientific and environmental topic. The Forum in Bonn is organized by Deutsche Welle and runs from June 21 to 23.
According to Hoyer, climate change is also related to foreign affairs, security and defense.
“Climate change has everything a story needs to make headlines around the world,” said Hoyer. “Everyone has heard of it and has an opinion on it. It is discussed extensively and emotionally. It directly influences many people’s lives and can further escalate existing conflicts or even cause new ones.”..
According to Swiss adventurer and balloonist Bertrand Piccard, the stale state of this issue is a problem for journalists right now…
“This is your challenge in the media – to show it as the most interesting and exciting adventure that we can have in the 21st century,” said Piccard….http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5717769,00.html

How does the PNAS article control for the conspiracy revealed in the leaked emails, which showed Mann & all pulling strings in journals to prevent sceptical articles from being published? (Remember his fury at one journal actually beginning to air doubts about global warming.) The correspondence left no doubt that the publication record does not reflect the impartial, scientific merit of the sceptical argument. I’m fairly certain the same “selection bias” can be found in academic appointments.

How many papers someone has published or their credentials doesnt make them any more right or smarter than anyone else – this is a pointless list!
Plus, if you look for papers that attempt to demonstrate man is driving climate change, you will not find many. Nearly all assume the IPCC’s position is right, and their position is based on a hand full of papers and un-tested models, plus a lot of faith – there are probably just as many papers contradicting global warming as there are geniunely making a case for it!
Unfortunelty, someone who studies the mating habits of the lesser spotted wood pidgeon will add in the sentence “impacts of climate change” and secure funding, and as they assume it is real and happening, they are considered to support the hypothesis, but they dont, they merely consider what effects it may have and get funding to do what they love at the same time

The question no one will answer—— WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE? This may sound silly but it is the only question I have posed that unsettles a confirmed alarmist. We should demand the list of requisite beliefs (the levels of confidence would be too cruel to ask). And does believing in AGW but not in a green economy make you a skeptic?

old construction worker says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
Do you mean to say that the lack of cloud cover could warm the planet. That’s crazy talk. (SIC)
This afternoon, the inhabitants of Monterrey faced the effect that Dr. Spencer is mentioning in his report; regarding cloud cover. The temperature around 3 PM was 37 °C (98.6 F). Suddenly, a wide group of clouds coming from the southwest covered the whole sky above the heads for almost 30 minutes. The temperature dropped to 32 °C (89.6 F). Then the sky got cleared again and the temperature went up to 35 °C (95 F). One hour later, the temperature increased to 38 °C (100.4 F). Of course the latter temperature was not caused by the lack of clouds, but by the direct incident sunbeams upon the surface. Nevertheless, the presence of dense clouds covering the whole visible dome of the atmosphere made the local temperature decreased by 5 °C. By the way, the temperature of the asphalt was 65.7 °C (150.26 F).

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Spencer, for finally letting us see the real tap root of the Climategate scandal:
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
I have suspected this some time – because that would explain why unexpected data on Earth’s heat source (The Sun) have been ignored for decades – but it took Climategate to reveal NAS’s deep involvement in the misuse of science as a tool of propaganda.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Roy
At least your in good company with Galileo. In science it only takes one fact to disprove a theory. The ratio of Aristotelians vs Galileo was even greater than Anderegg et al. find. Yet Galileo’s theory won over the Aristotelians’ appeals to authority. So keep probing.

Walter Schneider says:
June 22, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I thought that all rather self evident, but I like the train of thought. There are some, that apparently, don’t recognize the dangers of recent events. While it is always fun to pick on national socialists, we should all remember that socialism is a base tenet of aforementioned. It was easy for the Stazi to form and be effective because it was a small step to move from national socialism to global socialism. All one has to do is give up national identity and succumb to global identity. And, in that, one gains totalitarianism. A, here’s the :-).
Given the 500 “published and cited” scientists that question the CAGW assertion, and given the embracing of such a theory(we call it a consensus) and given the already observable harm done to mankind, I believe there are people who wish mankind harm. I believe there are people who think only certain few should be privy to knowledge and those certain few should control the rest of society. I, further, believe Eric Arthur Blair was only wrong in his time frame. But, I also believe we as a society can overcome the totalitarian attempt at control of this globe and co-exist as a loose coalition of peoples of this world. Each society to be able to rise and fall as to its own value until freedom is key and not control. Then, and only then, can the loose coalition become tighter.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
—Part III, Chapter III, Nineteen Eighty-Four”————- but it doesn’t have to be so. All it takes is for a few good quiet men to become loud.
🙂

@ Theo Goodwin says:
Right is unchanging. It is the right that creates the might. Be it meaning correct or meaning privilege by birth of all mankind, right makes might. My nation’s history is a great example. Every war we won, is because we possessed right. Be it a birthright or being correct, it was because we possessed “right”. Every war we didn’t win, is because we didn’t possess “right”. The U.S. didn’t have might to create “right”. It had “right” that created might. The same is true with many nations of this world. I find it odd that many can’t see this assertion.

“As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.”
I like the smiley badge idea. Maybe we could make it specific to sceptics by making the mouth into a question mark 😕
Kind of asking the question and blowing a raspberry at the same time.

rbateman says: “It’s summer in the N. Hemisphere, and the Warmist Inquisition is feeling its oats…”
I had to get my fleece lined jacket out again this month. If it’s summer here, you can’t prove it by me.

pat says:
Pat Moffitt says:
June 22, 2010 at 8:37 pm
The question no one will answer—— WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE?
A heretofore observed natural sucession of climate events that has been labeled heresy.
The implied supposition is that the climate never changes, nor has it changed since the dawn of civilization.
Beats me why anyone would want to think that, or that only man can change climate.
The skeptical view is that man’s contribution is swamped by natural causes.
My own personal view is that it takes a lifetime to experience enough of the change to recognize the demarcations between cold and warm climate periods. I was born in the middle of cold period, watched as the world went to warming, and now see the world once again growing colder.
Billions of people on the Earth know it too.
So, who’s fooling whom?

jorgekafkazar says:
June 22, 2010 at 9:43 pm
I’m trying to steel myself for the winter that now looks to come early. I hold little hope for a normal summer, though it would be nice to get fooled on the pleasant side of things.

What do I have to do to get on a list! Everybody is on some list or other, except me. Whatsa matter, don’t I count? How insulting! How disempowering!
I’ve had enough of that malarky. I hereby initiate a list for listless people.
1. Mike
2. ?????

Wow–folks here sure take themselves pretty seriously. Likening the dearth of publishable articles by “skeptics” to the work of the Stasi? The Inquisition? Kristallnacht? Really?? I guess there’s nothing like a persecution complex to make one feel important. But I’m inclined to think that people who can’t draw a simple historical analogy without indulging in wild overstatements probably can’t be trusted to make discerning scientific judgments. It erodes confidence as a general matter.
You may think you’re whining to a sympathetic echo chamber here, but some of the rest of us are watching, and what we see is more than a little childish and pathetic. If you’re going to be a brave and noble happy-face-button-wearing Skeptic, do so with a little dignity, and spare us the petty histrionics.[REPLY – Do bear in mind that we tolerate criticism. Any post that directed anything like what you have said at almost any CAGW blog would never see the light of day. ~ Evan]

It seems that many are wallowing in a persecution complex. As far as real persecutions are concerned there is Senator Inhofe trying to criminalize 17 Climatologists. Also, Virginia’s Attorney General Cuccineli and his strong arm tactics against Michael Mann.
Then there are the real psychos like Lord Monckton who accuses those who believe in Global Warming of being responsible for the genocide of millions in Africa who have died from famine as well as 40 million African children who have died from Malaria. He keeps referring to AGW’s as Nazis, Fascists, Goebbelian etc. ad nauseum.
This demonization is done in the same vein as Glenn Beck’s and Rush Limbaugh’s psychotic/psychopathic rants against all who don’t bow down to them. In fact, since they rape Godwin’s Law, I might as well come out and say it. These Psychic Vampires are doing the same to those who believe in Global Warming as Hitler did to the Jews. First demonize them. Then, when convenient, start rounding them up.
Beat your chests in self righteous indignation all you want but it is the real climatologist who are getting death threats and walking around with body guards.[REPLY – Oh, Lord. Normally, even I might delete that (for your own good)! But, since you you insist . . . #B^1 ~ Evan]

Jonas Whale says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:24 pm
[REPLY – Do bear in mind that we tolerate criticism. Any post that directed anything like what you have said at almost any CAGW blog would never see the light of day. ~ Evan]
VILLABOLO’S RESPONSE:
Strange, as I posted a criticism right after Jonas Whale posted his (10:24 pm) and I saw it simply disappear from the screen without appearing on thread to await moderation as usual.[REPLY – Hmm. Not by me. Some posts do get deleted, of course. But we draw a wide line. Mere disagreement is freely allowed. Sometimes a post winds up in the spam filter (in which case it vanishes until/unless it is retrieved). “Code words” can cause that. However, if one of us mods feels a post is over the line it can suffer a bit of an accident. (I delete very few posts, though.) ~Evan][Further reply. Yeah, you are currently in spam. It’ll be reviewed and either allowed or dumped. ~ Evan]

Lucia said:
“As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.”
I like the smiley badge idea. Maybe we could make it specific to sceptics by making the mouth into a question mark 😕
Kind of asking the question and blowing a raspberry at the same time.
I’m not much good with artwork, but how about something like this?http://www.tallbloke.net/img/scepticsmiley.JPG
We could get badges made in each country and put them on ebay, profits to sceptical blogs tip jars. I can get 500 2″ buttons made here for £110
Good idea?

Jonas Whale, I’d like to put you on my list. Please send me your real name, address, employer (if you have one), and SSN. Your bank account number would also be helpful in confirming your identity. Thank you for your cooperation.

Kafbst says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Kafbst, thank you.
In the “scientifically secularized” West and the “mind-raped” communist East (like in “1984” book) even Ph.D. is not powerful guardsman against common ignorance.
That’s why PNAS was able to forge the Blacklist in the Satanic Fire. The natural next step I see is the PNAS publishing proscriptive lists of AGW denialists which will guarantee them jail terms up from 5 years minimum. (Alas, I’m not joking….)
My best regards to You, Kafbst.

Jonas Whale says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:24 pm
I’m inclined to think that people who can’t draw a simple historical analogy without indulging in wild overstatements probably can’t be trusted to make discerning scientific judgments.
You mean, like James Hansen?
“If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains — no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”

@Jonas Whale says: June 22, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Take myself seriously? Not really.
What I do take seriously is people who want to introduce an extremely radical change to the way we produce the energy we need to keep civilization working. As the “solutions” on offer hardly work and as the cost will take up the majority of the GDP of the developed world, this will lead to the ruin of our society and dash the hopes of millions living in abject poverty in the third world.
And all this on the basis of pseudo science, dodgy computer simulations, cherry picked and extensively massaged data and a bunch of scary fairy stories put up by a bunch of eco-fascists. Eagerly adopted by cynical and scientifically incompetent politicians desperate to find new ways of taxing the pants off us. And crooked carbon traders out to make their next billion, now the sub-prime mortgage scam has been exposed.
Don’t know if all those guys and gals take themselves seriously.
I do.
They are dangerous. If they had a few more brain cells connected up, they’d be really dangerous.
As for stupid trolls who hide behind silly nicknames? Grow up!

As for yellow badges, here’s what I’d like to see all skeptics wear. Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.
That is the problem with You on the West. You do not see the apparent that wearing whatever you come up with will NOT change anything – You still will be wearing a sort of STIGMA.
Is Climatology so exceptionally prone to stupidity or it is a “signum temporis” of nowadays Science as a whole?
The AGW proponents use extensively communist propaganda tricks to which you are like children to lollipops. Use Code of Hammurabi instead!
Regards

@ villabolox says: June 22, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Mine as well. It happens. Happened to me as well, just now.
Get over it.
And I’m not even a troll like you are.[REPLY – Yeah, you’re in spam, too. Not sure why. We’ll check it out in due course. If a post “vanishes” immediately without any “review time”, it nearly always means you got stuck in the spam filter. ~ Evan]

@Jonas Whale: You’re right we are over reacting. Maybe we should ask for a list of scientists who’ve produced papers proving that CO2 is, at least partially, the cause of the current warming, you know with opinion and guess work replaced by empirical evidence.
The blacklist would dwarf the CO2 list then and we would have proved that we are right.
Ger the picture?

Jonas, just to clarify, I need your name for my listless list. You see, once I get a significant and robust number of listless people on my list, 4 or 5, I plan to write a paper for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about listless people, their characteristics, and why they never appear on lists. Lists of people is a popular topic these days in science journals and I am sure to get it published, once the paper is peer reviewed by other listless people, who are the only ones qualified to be peers for this kind of paper. Of course, once the paper is published, everybody listed will no longer be listless, which is ironic, but then irony is an important component of the post-normal scientific method.

Well at least they’ve taken the step of acknowledging the sceptics.
Now of course they are saying the sceptics aren’t really qualified.
That too over time will be shown as false.
Keep the focus on climategate and their bad science. That’s what they are trying to shake loose.

Kafbst says at 6:03 that the Inquisition shouldn’t be used to indict the Church, and he may be right. But to suggest that the Inquisition was benevolent and not religious based as his linked article does is ludicrous. From that link:
“Like all courts in Europe, the Spanish Inquisition used torture. But it did so much less often than other courts. Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases. Each instance of torture was limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. In only 1 percent of the cases was torture applied twice and never for a third time. ”
The link also refers to the Roman Inquisition as restraining the rampant persecutions in Italy, but this is unconvincing. Wasn’t Galileo silenced by these thugs?

Jonas Whale says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:24 pm
“You may think you’re whining to a sympathetic echo chamber here, but some of the rest of us are watching”
OOh, scary.
But seriously, we are watching the AGWers too, and that’s why we’re here, we agnostics and sceptics. We’re watching how they elevate a difference of opinion into “denialism” with its undertones of nazism. We’re watching how it is they who started with the hyperbolic accusations and metaphors – the death trains and death spirals…
If you can’t see how movements that start out with mere invective can end up being actively oppressive and even, ultimately, violent, then you haven’t learnt your history.
Methinks you are projecting with statements about sympathetic echo chambers (funny that you have been allowed to do other than echo, by the way), lack of scientific judgement and dignity. Look in the mirror, my friend. Remove the beam in thine own eye.

“…..97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers….”.
That result doesn’t surprise me any more than a survey of, say, psychiatrists practicing electroconvulsive therapy, (a controversial treatment, I understand), would show that most of them are convinced of the efficacy of the treatment and publish papers confirming it.
This study was a purely cynical exercise to prop up ‘The Science’ or is a pathetic illustration of the circular logic which seems to plague ‘The Science’ practitioners.

A list of the raw ‘data deniers’ over the years might be more useful Dr Spencer. As for a list of the raw ‘data doubters’ over that time you’d expect it’s almost axiomatic to doubt something that consistently fails to appear, which seriously begs the question as to why so few on the latter list?

The best analogy to make with this global warming religion is with the Council of Nicea when they decided what form of Jesus they wanted to be the formal and only religion of the Roman Empire. All traditional forms, gospels or counter opinions were discarded, oppressed and even destroyed.

villabolo says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm
‘Beat your chests in self righteous indignation all you want but it is the real climatologist who are getting death threats and walking around with body guards.’
With 10 Trillion Dollars per year on the line (ccx), who are the climatologist afraid of? People like Anthony or Al Gore and Co. and the far left?
The scam has been exposed. There is money on the line and a lot of “behind of locked doors” manipulation will come to light. If I was a climatologist who has sold my soul for a piece of gold, I would be asking myself, “Am I expendable because of what I know?”.

old construction worker says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
Do you mean to say that the lack of cloud cover could warm the planet. That’s crazy talk. (SIC)
I don’t understand that “SIC.” Do you mean, somehow, that you’re kidding? The IPCC made a statement very similar to Dr. Spencer’s in either the AR3 or the AR4 or maybe both. The author used some word like “disconcerting,” saying that it was disconcerting that a very small change in cloud cover could explain the 20th century warming.
In case anyone goes looking for this, and doesn’t find it, let me say, it’s possible that it was only in the AR4 draft which the Bush administration put online many months before the official release.
By the way, they gave a user id and password to anyone who affirmed online that he was a U.S. citizen or legal resident alien, and would not quote, divulge, what have you, the draft. As I understand the matter, the IPCC presumes or requires that the national governments will only make the draft available to experts. So the administration adhered to the letter of the rule, but not the spirit of it. (If the IPCC “requires,” then, I suppose, the administration took the position that it couldn’t know of all experts.) I was surprised that this never received attention from the media, and very little attention from blogs. Me, I burned the whole thing to CD.

“The new paper also implicitly adds most of the public to the black list, since surveys have shown dwindling public belief in the consensus view of climate change.”
lol… I can just see that now on the list. Public, John Q.
Anyway, so… What do the inquistors plan to do about this, especially since more and more people aren’t buying it? They may just want to keep their damn mouths closed, seeing as how they’re out numbered by the broader public.

This appear to be the same old logical fallacies that the CAGW alarmists has always relied on to delude the masses. Scientific truth established by a show of hands or “we have published more papers” type argument. It was and will always be, irrelevant.

Why does not everyone realise that most enquiries involve a very broad brush and a huge tub of whitewash.
Next winter looks to be colder than last in the Northern Hemisphere lets wait until next spring 2011 to see how the climate is changing, The climate has always changed.

Decades ago, this Jewish fellow won the lottery. His friend said “How are you going to spend it?” “One third to me, one third to the Synagogue and one third to the Nazi Party”. “Why the Nazi Party?” “Well, they were the ones who tattooed the winning number on my arm, weren’t they?”
So why not change the smiley design competition to a permanent tatt on the arm? That demonstrates strength of conviction, as well as conviction for lack of strength in following the Party line.http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/2010/Nasty.jpg?t=1277295310

Don´t worry about the Inquisition, torture by law had to be restricted to only 15 minutes and no blood shedding (gore) was allowed. Here a representation of the hall of tortures:http://www.congreso.gob.pe/museo.htm

We have been already psychologically tortured by some fanatic post-normal scientists/inquisitorial dominican priests believers, who, once in a while appear and take over posts here, and with their repeated offences force the rest of us to leave.
It is like when a drunk guy, in the middle of a nice party, begins to shout and to behave improperly, all guests leave.

moderators have been very tolerant of villabolo
villabolo,
would you put your feet back on the ground. i hope you don’t talk like that at the dinner table. please don’t do it on Thanksgiving Day or you’ll be that relative that everyone has to put up with.

Ironically, the Spanish Inquisition was perhaps one of the fairest tribunals of its time which emphasised rules of evidence and procedural fairness. The accused had to be fed and housed in decent quarters. Of course, this could include torture but torture at the time had been acceptable judicial practice from time immemorial. For example, under Roman (pagan) law, a slave’s evidence could be accepted in court only after s/he had been tortured.
Secular tribunals at the time of the Inquisition were far more barbaric.
Interestingly, speaking of procedural fairness, the Gestapo were far prefereable to the Cheka of Lenin’s time and its various successor organisations under Stalin such as the NKVD. The Gestapo for all their nastiness were interested in establishing the ‘truth’ – is this person genuinely an enemy of the regime? Its communist equivalent ran a quota system (key performance indicators anyone?) caring not a whit whether a suspect was guilty or innocent.
Different times – different standards – thank God we don’t live under either.
I guess it’s all relative – let’s just rejoice in our freedom to debate and dispute – either way sooner or later we’ll either freeze or fry.

“The vast majority of them simply assumed global warming was manmade.”
No, they didn’t. The vast majority of them, in fact all of them, assumed CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increase of its concentration had to have calculable consequences. The source of this extra CO2 has no bearing on the model results.http://weerwoord.be/includes/forum_read.php?id=1171935&tid=1171935

“…a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Unintentionally, Anderegg’s PNAS paper provides evidence that such an opposed scientific paradigm change over anthropogenic global warming is under way:
1) Anderegg et al. appeal to authority, rather than address “inconvenient” discrepencies between models and facts.
2) Anderegg et al. use “anthropogenic climate change” rather than “anthropogenic global warming”. They have already given up on trying to defend “global warming” and retreat to “climate change” to allow for the current decline in rate of growth or even “global cooling”.
3) Anderegg et al. do not account for the massive funding bias of almost all climate science funding coming from governments. This funding bias is amplified by being controlled by politicians driven by global warming alarmists. This both drives funds into research and consequent frequency papers.
4) Anderegg et al. do not account for the severe “bullying” or gatekeeper bias against climate “realists” (“skeptics”) in peer review and publications as exposed by ClimateGate etc.
5) The requirement 20 climate publications eliminates most scientists who would most likely provide the paradigm changing evidence and models. E.g., Einstein’s first two papers transformed physics. Only the little child dared declare “The emperor has no clothes”.
6) Their “climate” publication criteria eliminates the mathematical expertise most lacking in climate science and most evident in those challenging the tenants of “anthropogenic climate change”. Their 20 “climate” publication cutoff eliminates Steve McIntyre who is has been most effective in exposing the emperor’s vanity, and does not recognize his non-climate expertise for his critiques.
7) They resort to ad hominem “contrarian” and “denier” rather than “climate realist”.
I encourage the next generation to have the guts and insight to expose the hubris and emptiness of “anthropogenic climate change”.

Christopher Hanley:
‘That result doesn’t surprise me any more than a survey of, say, psychiatrists practicing electroconvulsive therapy, (a controversial treatment, I understand), would show that most of them are convinced of the efficacy of the treatment and publish papers confirming it.’
Actually, electroconvulsive therapy is a long established and highly effective treatment which has been subjected to numerous double blind placebo controlled trials. It’s a life saving treatment in many instances – particularly for severe melancholic depression which has failed to repsond to medication, patients who have stopped eating and drinking, or who are highly suicidal.
Psychiatrists ‘believe’ in the treatment because of evidence. By contrast, other treatments such as insulin coma therapy have been long discarded because properly conducted clinical trials demonstrated their inefficacy. Electroconvulsive therapy is controversial principally because we don’t understand how it works and because of the stigma associated with psychiatric illness.
In all too many circles, expressing even a smidgeon of doubt about any aspect of the AGW ‘consensus’ is tantamount to emitting a very loud fart in the midst of a solemn eulogy at a funeral.
Stigma strikes again.

The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun
A new “study” has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which has examined the credentials and publication records of climate scientists who are global warming skeptics versus those who accept the “tenets of anthropogenic climate change”.

Indeed.
A veritable ad hominem (known as argumentum ad hominem, Latin for “argument to the man” or his horse, or the day he was born on) against all those who would raise one sceintific fact in opposition to the ‘church’ of AGW …
.
.

The only resort that dogma can take is totalitarian overwhelm, when it isn’t believed. This is the opposite of the scientific method, as we all know.
This is what Galileo faced when he dared to tell the truth. He faced the wrath of ideology who had the aptitude to be galling and atrocious when faced with a outlier.
Galileo won the arguments from then on, in the longer term, and thanks to him, the world is a very different place than it would have been had he not lived. (He began the modern scientific technique that the western world banished under Aristotle and the Church)
Sadly, it looks like this era is closing and that science is being sold to advocates for reasons of a new totalitarianism, similar to that which ruled Europe ruled when the Church was a straightjacket.

The “Flat Earth Society” (aka- The AGW Mob) contends it’s “ALL ABOUT THIS” and nothing else. The “Round Earth Mob” (aka – Society in General) contend it’s not just “ALL ABOUT THIS” but many things as well AND Mother Nature’s Little Old Fickle Finger of Fate, and it’s insane to spend money we don’t have on one stupid simple minded issue. For the past few decades, within the hallowed halls of Academia, the ‘Flat Earth Society” has been getting all the money and publication space they wanted from the coffers of the realm and the mickey mouse academic press. But, alas, the coffers -like Mother Hubberd’s once ginormous cubberd– are now bare and the screams of pain and suffering in Academia have been frightfully loud of late. What’s to be done? Can no one save us?
Slowly, quietly, out of the darkness, comes a shadowy figure dressed all in black…
Tune in again in a hundred years or so to find out what happens next. The Shadow Knows!

In my opinion, “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” is spot on.
Contemporary heresy relates to the dispute of “ideas that are in fundamental disagreement with the status quo in any practice and branch of knowledge.”
Heresy confronts established Dogma where the tenets of the Dogma are considered to be clearly demonstrated and beyond refute.
The problem, the CO2 portion of the AGW debate isn’t clearly demonstrated and beyond scientific refute. As far as I can tell, a very small percentage of the Scientific Community is actually willing to openly support this aspect of the AGW debate. Yet, CO2 is the tenet for the Carbon tax and trading exchange.
The term Climate Heretic seems far more appropriate then Climate Skeptic or Climate Denier as no one is denying the presence of Climate and its natural cycles of change.
My 2 cents, efficient use of resources and Stewardship are easy to support. They simply decided to make the solution harder for some unknown reason.

1) If you have a much larger population of believers than sceptics, then the most cited believers will of course have more publications than the sceptics, purely as a sampling artifact. Only the mean number of publications should be compared across the 2 groups (even if 2 groups can be objectively defined).
2) Many times, “believers” publish papers which in fact poke a hole in some cherished part of the global warming edifice, even if the paper does not loudly shout this out. This black list ignores this.

Slowly, quietly, out of the darkness, comes a shadowy figure dressed all in black…
♫♫♫
As I watched in sorrow, there suddenly appeared
A figure gray and ghostly beneath a flowing beard
In times of deepest darkness, I’ve seen him dressed in black
Now my tapestry’s unraveling, he’s come to take me back
He’s come to take me back…..
♫♫♫

The question I have is “how do you [~SNIP~] sleep nights. The science may not be in and no actual scientist ever says that it is. However, all the evidence of Global Warming and its anthropogenic causation that any rational thinker could want, is in. It is incontrovertible and there is not a single peer reviewed paper that can contradict that.
Given the evidence of the suffering that many areas of the world are already experiencing due to the Climate Change, the smallest amount of conscience would lead you to take the path that every unbiased scientist; every scientist who is not beholden to some financial or ideological interest, says is essential to the preservation of this Planet in a state in which humanity can still flourish.
Religion has been brought into these comments. Is it not pertinent than to ask Dr. Spencer about his affiliation with the Southern Baptists? Is he perverting his “science” to conform with that branch of that Church that demands its adherents deny Climate Change. Is it not pertinent also to raise the question of a certain graph since he persists in his attempts to distort known and irrefutable science?
His denigration of the whole scientific community to further whatever his real ends are is not something to applaud. The study merely confirms what many others have found: what surveys of media coverage have shown. That a handful of what were once called sceptics and now more accurately known as deniers, have for two decades received as much publicity for their “views” as the whole world of science. That, contrary to Dr. Spencer’s claim, every possible alternative theory has been thoroughly researched and found wanting.
And Spencer knows that!
The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
All that remains to discover that is of consequence is how soon and how serious. There is little argument among scientists that the bad is coming soon and that it will be bad. The long term, without serious action, is unthinkable. Some of the bad is here now and unstoppable.

I just received a request for a donation to the AAAS for the purpose of “educating the public” about global warming. It seems they are “concerned” that 40% of the public does not drink the “kool aid”, up from 30% last year. I have better use for my money than trying to save the earth from hypothetical sequele.

“”” The Global Warming Inquisition Has Begun
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. “””
Glad you chaps are finally on the case Dr Roy.
The problem with the cloud modulation theory, is that it can be understood completely by any 8th grade High School Science Student. Well these days it would make a good question for “Are You Smarter than a Fifth grader ?”
Frank Wentz et al’s paper “How much more Rain Will Global Warming Bring ?” in SCIENCE July 7/2007; which we have talked about previously points the way to the clouds. That is if you believe; as a respectable Scientist that it is quite acceptible to have precipitable clouds with your precipitation; and that a 7% increase in Evap/Precip for a one deg C rise in mean global surface temperature; could very well happen along with about a 7% increase in (precipitable) cloud cover; well in the form of increased cloud area; increased cloud optical density, and increased cloud persistence time; in some mix of course.
Dr Roy, it’s time to get off the “Climate Sensitivity” train, and board a vehicle which is much more likely to go somewhere.
” IT’S THE WATER !! “

Amused says: “The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.”
This is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium, the “argument from ignorance” fallacy. It is the fallacy of assuming that a proposition must be true because it has not been proved false. The implication is that climate scientists know everything there is to know about the climate. But as we know, factors such as clouds are not taken into account by computer models, and there may be other ‘unknown unknowns.’
“Amused” also fails to provide the empirical, testable evidence necessary to falsify the CAGW TheoryHypothesis Conjecture. As Karl Popper shows, a conjecture that is not testable is not even science, but merely opinion.
There is a reason that the promoters of catastrophic AGW refuse to disclose their data and methodologies: they know that their conjecture would be promptly falsified, and the result would be the derailing of their lucrative taxpayer-funded gravy train.
Mr Amused can frighten himself all he wants, but the fact is that the climate is acting entirely within its past parameters. In fact, currently the planet is enjoying a “Goldilocks climate,” neither too hot nor too cold, but ju-u-u-st right. That not only absolves CO2, but indicates that CO2 is both harmless and beneficial.
Amused listens only to people with a pecuniary motive for scaring folks like him. But most here prefer to listen to what planet Earth is clearly telling us. Which one should we believe?

“Amused” says with a final two paragraphs in concluding its unisex hilarious un-denier bombast:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
All that remains to discover that is of consequence is how soon and how serious. There is little argument among scientists that the bad is coming soon and that it will be bad. The long term, without serious action, is unthinkable. Some of the bad is here now and unstoppable.”
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I presume that “it” (i.e. unisex “amused”) is assuming, absent “some Devine Plan,” is that there is no other possible explanation for “it’s” inescapable conclusion that global temperature variations, whether hotter or colder, are unquestionably man-made.
Well, how about the good/bad Sun? And thank goodness that even with any future “serious action” by the un-deniers, the Sun will remain unstoppable!

James Sexton says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Mr. Prall’s efforts were so comprehensive that he actually included a dead person on his list. Perhaps that wasn’t the criteria, but then if that were to be true, how far back does he go?
Well, if we are going to include those who have crossed to the other strand, then we may include Sir John Herschel and Michael Faraday to the skeptics list!
‘“We stand on the verge of a vast cosmical discovery such as nothing hitherto imagined can compare with.”
—Sir John Herschel in 1850, upon the discovery of a link between magnetic storms on Earth and sunspots, to Michael Faraday, the vaunted experimentalist who was investigating the links between electricity and magnetism.’“Our Misunderstood Sun”by W. Thornhill

“And that [consensus] might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.”
“Courtillot and Jean-Louis Le Mouel, a French geo-magneticist, and three Russian colleagues first came into climate research as outsiders four years ago. The Earth’s magnetic field responds to changes in solar output, so geomagnetic measurements are good indicators of solar activity. They thought it would be interesting to compare solar activity with climatic temperature measurements.
Their first step was to assemble a database of temperature measurements and plot temperature charts. To do that, they needed raw temperature measurements that had not been averaged or adjusted in any way. Courtillot asked Phil Jones, the scientist who runs the CRU database, for his raw data, telling him (according to one of the ‘Climategate’ emails that surfaced following the recent hacking of CRU’s computer systems) “there may be some quite important information in the daily values which is likely lost on monthly averaging.” Jones refused Courtillot’s request for data, saying that CRU had “signed agreements with national meteorological services saying they would not pass the raw data onto third parties.” (Interestingly, in another of the CRU emails, Jones said something very different: “I took a decision not to release our [meteorological] station data, mainly because of McIntyre,” referring to Canadian Steve McIntyre, who helped uncover the flaws in the hockey stick graph.)”source

Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:04 amGiven the evidence of the suffering that many areas of the world are already experiencing due to the Climate Change, the smallest amount of conscience would lead you to take the path that every unbiased scientist; every scientist who is not beholden to some financial or ideological interest, says is essential to the preservation of this Planet in a state in which humanity can still flourish.
“Suffering due to climate change?” You can’t be serious. By far, most suffering is due to human greed, arrogance, and stupidity. Weather events, of course enter into it as well, as in Hurricane Katrina. I suppose it is just easier to set up a nebulous (man made) “climate change” bogey man as a convenient scapegoat for all of society’s ills. Some of us though, like to face reality, and deal with actual problems and actual solutions.
…every scientist who is not beholden to some financial or ideological interest… Unfortunately that pretty much rules out every grant-grubbing, government job-dependent CAGW/CC “scientist” pushing your Alarmist ideology.
It is, in fact, the Alarmists who need to check their own consciences about the completely unnecessary and costly panic they are causing about a non-existent “problem” that we humans supposedly have caused. Yes, it warmed a bit last century – a measured .7C, of which possibly 2/3 is due to UHI, poor placement, and station drop out. Wait until we start cooling, a process that may have already started. Then we’ll have a real problem, and one which will certainly require the use of the plentiful and relatively cheap fossil fuels Warmists so much want to replace with expensive and unreliable energies, which would actually cost lives. In fact the question is, how do you people sleep at night?

Wow…quite the late blast from “Amused”, but oh so naive. Good response Smokey.
Anthony is really on to something with the smiley face as the badge for the skeptic/denier. I don’t think it should be changed at all. Subtle, recognizable, and no copyright infringement. Ready made supply of badges and T shirts which could be made more overt by adding the words “Climate Change Realist”. Reflects both an optimistic view on the environment and humanity,
I hope the idea gets real legs.

The comparison to the inquisition is unfair… To the inquisition. The inquisition was supposed to be dealing with matters of faith, the NCAS is supposed to be dealing with science. Instead they too are dealing in faith.
NAS is so corrupted by money and lust for power that scientific method is an inconvenience that they can ignore at will. It is a bit like the worst abuses of the inquisition in this way.

Truth is not a democratic process. It’s all very simple.
If you don’t have clear proof you can say “Everyone knows it to be true”. PNAS saying that they have a higher quality population based on statistically higher publishing rate of their CHERRY PICKED group rather than the mean IQ of all AGW proponents is telling…
In every sense I can think of, the “alarmists” are in the majority Vs the “skeptics”. It’s easier to cherry pick a larger group. If you add in the spoon fed public their mean IQ drops to below average (I assume).
Skepticism is Science and positively created the whole idea of Science.
The PNAS article is nothing more than a cheap trick.

A happy-face is too general; it doesn’t convey anything specific about the climate debate. I suggest a round button showing a horizontal hockey stick with an upward-pointing blade on the right slashed through with a standard red “NO” line. Simple and clear.

“Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.”

How about replacing the U-shaped smile with a hockey stick that is broken in the middle (forming a sort of V-shaped smile)?

Or how about a pair of upraised hands snapping a hockey stick (with upturned blade at the right), in homage to the logo of the War Resisters League, in which the hands are snapping a rifle? That would be wittier and more annoying to warmists than a mere red-line slash.

Roy: Do you have any supporting evidence of this statement (publications, data, etc.?)
“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
And what is meant by most? And is this a global 2% reduction in cloudiness? What about regional importance?
I am genuinely interested…

bubbagyro says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:27 pm
…..I find it so fascinating that the high priest, Gore, has no degree in science, but in Divinity, and his minion, Pachauri, has a degree in coal steam engine trains.
I find it interesting, also, that the warm-earthers’ methods have and will cause worldwide famines, perhaps causing a second Dark Age, as the earth laughs, and cools.
___________________________________________________________________
I found it frightening a couple of years ago reading:“….big investors are “hurriedly moving their wealth out of stocks and shares and into farmland….” The Times article suggests that, “Across the world, hedge fund managers, property developers and other investors” are all ready to buy up British farmland.http://www.deepjournal.com/p/7/a/en/1237.html
AND“Barton Briggs, one of Wall Street’s most legendary investment strategists, is advising the rich and powerful to buy up farms and stock them with “seed, fertiliser, canned food. wine, medicine. clothes etc.” (and the “etc” would seem to mean guns to keep away the rest of us…)…”
“The key is going to be agriculture”
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph on Thursday was one of the first mainstream journalists to point out the grim corollary between oil depletion and famine. He quotes Jeff Currie of US investment bank Goldman Sachs:
“We have never seen this before when commodity prices were already at record highs. Over the next 18 to 36 months we are probably going into crisis mode across the commodity complex.
The key is going to be agriculture. China is terrified of the current situation. It has real physical shortages,” he said, referencing China still having memories of starvation in the 1960s seared in its collective mind….
One sure sign of the coming world food crisis brought on by environmental problems and increasingly scarce water supplies is the ever reducing major grain supplies – and China’s present trauma.”Warmwell
The cost of producing food is directly related to the cost of oil, as the recent increase in oil prices showed. Farmers can not “absorb” any more of the costs it has to be passed on but the big buyers are not raising the prices they will pay so farmers are forced out of business. Once a farm is turned into house lots or sold to a mega-corporation there is no going back.

In business life is centered around the good products and the good customers .
Talking dirty about your competitors is a kind of behaviour which is punished in the market-place . The AGW – crowd is showing a lot of faith , but badmouthing others will only harm their cause in the eyes of the public . So by applying all sorts of primitive behaviour a sound reasoning person will start to think : Who needs this ? Let them call us names and let us stand up as grown men and show our persistence without loosing one syllable on judging their behaviour .

@villabolo
‘It seems that many are wallowing in a persecution complex.’
Who’s wallowing you say?
Lets see:
‘As far as real persecutions are concerned there is Senator Inhofe trying to criminalize 17 Climatologists. Also, Virginia’s Attorney General Cuccineli and his strong arm tactics against Michael Mann.
Then there are the real psychos like Lord Monckton who accuses those who believe in Global Warming of being responsible for the genocide of millions in Africa who have died from famine as well as 40 million African children who have died from Malaria. He keeps referring to AGW’s as Nazis, Fascists, Goebbelian etc. ad nauseum.’
.
I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, obvious as it is, but you’re the one that’s wallowing in his persecution complex. Lesson to learn: Less projecting.
Oh and lets see about this, the Nazis, Fascists, Sovs, STASIs, Rumanian Securităţii Statului, all had a common ingredient–“great” list builders and list keepers the lot of ’em, just like the Catholic Church, hence the parallel to AGW proponents who create lists of people “good” or “bad”.
A list builder is always either building his list for violent reasons or for security, but the foundation is the same: Paranoia. See it doesn’t matter whether it’s a no-fly list or a guest list, it’s compiled for security reasons. And it doesn’t matter who’s creating a list of targets because it’s for violent reasons and compiling a list of opponents can been seen as for violent reasons, psychological violence, when the compiler can be defined as stalking people by keeping track of ’em.

In all of this, I am wont to compare the ‘government climate scientists’ to the Tories of old, of whom Samuel Adams addressed in his monograph. It has disturbing parallels:
“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say ‘what should be the reward of such sacrifices?’
Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”
~ Samuel Adams~

Here are some of the button/badge ideas listed on the “Ugliness — The blacklist of climate science” blog.http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1241/4728363118_e89d7247a2_b.jpg
Let me know if I missed any suggestions.
I personally like the Not CO2 because it represents both sides of the debate and is thus promotes conversation without being negative (something Anthony mentioned above).
The other that seems to work well graphically is the data with the question marks.

Ken Finney says:
June 23, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Hmm, I posted a couple of smiley badge suggestions a while ago, they don’t seem to have passed out of moderation.
The lifted eyebrow is a fun idea Ken.
[Please re-post, I don’t know what happened to that comment. ~dbs, mod.]

I wonder if the release of the names and affiliations of “skeptics” isn’t leading towards some type of “payback” for all the nasty emails, death-threats, dead skunks etc. that were hurled at Phil Jones, Michael Mann & company?
The RealClimate crowd were furious about such treatment of their heroes, so I wonder if they are not now empowered to conduct e-campaigns of their own?

Last time I commented on loose language on Watts Up With That it set off comment and debate on another site:http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-holding-a-belief-unscientific/
I think that lift was more of a peg to hang a different hat on than a serious exploration of the issue of trying to tightly define what is meant without opening the door to the possibility that the scientist is a not dispassionate observer and open equally to any outcome.
Roy says here:
“Instead, anthropogenic climate change has become a scientific faith. The fact that the very first sentence in the PNAS article uses the phrase “tenets of anthropogenic climate change” hints at this, since the term “tenet” is most often used when referring to religious doctrine, or beliefs which cannot be proved to be true.”
The point is well made that it is the use of language of religion and faith that has diverted the scientists involved away from a dispassionate position.
It is not that you cannot both be a scientist and hold beliefs, it is that the use of the wrong verbal and conceptual toolkit leads inevitably to confusion and error.
The equivalent perhaps of trying to use AF spanners on Metric nuts.

“”” Julienne says:
June 23, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Roy: Do you have any supporting evidence of this statement (publications, data, etc.?)
“As just one of many alternative explanations, most of the warming we have measured in the last 30 years could have been caused by a natural, 2% decrease in cloud cover. Unfortunately, our measurements of global cloud cover over that time are nowhere near accurate enough to document such a change.”
And what is meant by most? And is this a global 2% reduction in cloudiness? What about regional importance?
I am genuinely interested… “””
Well Julienne, if you are genuinely interested; read SCIENCE for July-7 2007; “How Much More Rain will Global Warming Bring ?” By Frank Wentz (RSS, Santa Rosa CA) et al.
In their paper they report on satellite measurements of changes in total global evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation that results from a 1 deg C rise in mean global surface temperature. No they didn’t measure a 1 deg C rise; it was less than that over the course of the measurements; note these were actual real world measured data; not the outputs of computer climate model simulations.
What they observed was that a 1 deg C rise, results in a 7% increase in all three parameters; Total global evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation.
Common sense says that precip and evap must always be equal over time; or else we would end up with the oceans overhead.
Now the standard GCMs agree with their observation of 7% increase in total atmospheric water content; but disagreed on the evap/precip amount claiming it is only 1% to 3% for a 1 deg C rise. That is an error of as much as a factor of 7 from real observed actual data. Fancy that; people giving credence to a fictional model that differs from reality by a factor of 7 times.
Now what Wentz et al didn’t mention was that in order to get a 7% increase in total global precipitation you also have to have an increase in total global cloud cover; like maybe about 7%; well 7% increase in clouds of the precipitating kind. Unless you have some theory of cloudless precipitation you want to promote.
That cloud cover increase could of course be a combination of increased cloud area; increased cloud optical density as a result of the increased water content; and increased cloud persistence time; before precipitation results in the dissipation of the cloud.
Now Dr Roy is saying only a 2% cloud decrease is enough to explain the warming; but Wentz’ results show the effect is much greater than that would imply. If a 7% change in cloud cover results from a 1 deg C rise; then you can pretty much kiss of any effect due to some small CO2 change. Increasing CO2 simply nudges up the long term mean global cloud cover percentage, by a miniscule amount; which simply blocks more sunlight than the increased returned LWIR from more CO2.
The water cloud system is in complete negative feedback control of the earth’s temperature range; and we couldn’t change the earth temperature; either up or down if we wanted to.
If it warms a bit; you get more water vapor; which eventually leads to more clouds, which reflect and block more sunlight from the ground, so it cools down. Nobody ever observed it to warm up in the shadow zone when a cloud passes in front of the sun; it always cools down.
And if it gets too cool, you simply get more precipitation, which dissipates some cloud, and allows more sunlight to reach the surface to warm it back up.
It’s so simple it ought to be taught in fifth grade.
But the problem is we have no way to measure accurately what total global cloud cover is. If you had wide field cameras in every single GPS satellite continuously monitoring the surface; that would still only give you a measure of the albedo contributions to temperature control; you have to have ground based below cloud monitoring to capture the effect of the optical blocking of additional sunlight from the ground; there is no such global capability; and clouds come and go so rapidly, that some silly twice per day observation would still not give you any real measure.
Only Mother gaia knows what the total global cloud cover is; and she always gets it right; which is why she keeps the Temperature so constant all the time.
We are all going to look back nostalgically on the era of the CO2 witchcraft; and wonder about how supposedly trained scientists could believe such nonsense.
If you have any good explanations for why cloud modulation does not feedback regulate the earth surface Temperature; I’m sure we’d all like to hear your exposition.

John from CA says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:18 pmHere are some of the button/badge ideas listed on the “Ugliness — The blacklist of climate science” blog. [–snip–]
John,
How about this: One with the words ‘Blacklisted for telling the truth,’ or even the word ‘Truth’ with the verboten symbol over it.

CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
June 23, 2010 at 1:39 pmI wonder if the release of the names and affiliations of “skeptics” isn’t leading towards some type of “payback” for all the nasty emails, death-threats, dead skunks etc. that were hurled at Phil Jones, Michael Mann & company?
The RealClimate crowd were furious about such treatment of their heroes, so I wonder if they are not now empowered to conduct e-campaigns of their own?
If such were ever proven to be true, they would be facing RICO charges in federal court for enticing others to stalk, itself which has its very own statute!
BRING IT ON!

Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:04 am
The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
All that remains to discover that is of consequence is how soon and how serious. There is little argument among scientists that the bad is coming soon and that it will be bad. The long term, without serious action, is unthinkable. Some of the bad is here now and unstoppable.
I don’t know why people come out with this sort of thing. The science was settled a long, long time ago – even before this current scare. Moreover, by active intervention, the trouble at the time was corrected in its entirity.
When the climate changed, people asked themselves “What is causing it? Why are crops failing? Why are animals dying? Why is disease running rampant?” They employed the best brains, both in the scientific field, and in the legal equiry field. They searched high and low, discarded every possibility, and came up with a diagnosis by exclusion: Witches.
Crops failed? Witches.
Animals died? Witches.
Ugly wife? Witches.
This robust conclusion could be drawn, as for any measured moment of “now” we know all there is to know, and there can be nothing else.
CO2 – just another word for witches.

You won’t publish this for reasons that you have already stated. That’s not a problem. But perhaps you could suggest to your contributors that they keep out of their articles any views they may have about religion. They are utterly irrelevant and have no place in a website dedicated to scientific research.
(Sorry if you already received this comment but I wasn’t sure that it was sent as my internet connection keeps disconnecting.)

John from CA says:
June 23, 2010 at 4:12 pmI added the raised eyebrow idea (included a globe for the iris) and the request from 899.
The raised eyebrow design is REALLY COOL!
Has anyone suggested a ‘Watts Up With That?’ button?
That would be with wording along the perimeter, with a frozen thermometer AND a raised eyebrow!

Thanks 899, these are just mock-ups so feel free to be critical. No one has suggested a WUWT button concept yet but it makes a great headline and slogan. The eye and a frozen red bulb thermometer would be fun — I’ll try it tomorrow.
I’m probably going to regret asking this Colin but what do the 4 moons of Jupiter have to do with climate change on Earth?

It seems that informed criticism of the Wattsupwiththat creed is not allowed. My responses do not make it through.
Shining a light on ignorance is frowned upon.
[Reply: I checked the spam bucket, nothing but spam there. Try again, I’ll watch for your post. ~dbs, mod.]

I did notice, btw, that a link I gave to better inform your readership about Cloud Cover did not show up in th unmoderated version.
[Reply: If you don’t have a couple of hours to spare to write the post you say disappeared, surely you have time to post a link on cloud cover. I’ll watch for it and make sure it gets posted. ~dbs, mod.]

When people start arguing credentials, you know the facts (data) are not in their favor. Any scientist who tries to prove a point with an analysis like this should be deeply embarrassed, and PNAS should be equally embarrassed to print such crap.
Wasn’t Stephen Schneider one of the players in Climategate? That’s sort of like Goebbels writing a review of the evidence in favor of Jews being a problem.

I did send Jim Prall an email thanking him for my inclusion in his Black List. Of course, I figured he wouldn’t publish it. I was right: he didn’t. This is my email to Bill Prall:
Hi, Jim!
I want to thank you for including me among the climate denialists, but I resent being placed at the 430th place. However, I guess that encouraged the Spanish government and the Madrid city authorities to send me an airplane ticket to Madrid for giving a lecture on next October about the incoming global cooling and its relationship with the chaotic movement of the solar system’s baricenter.
Thanks again, I am proud of being a denier, not of climate change -it’s always changing, nor of the climate science (poor dear, still in diapers) but about the fraudulent claims you people have been making for years.
I don’t think you have ever considered your master’s advice about balancing the difference in being effective in your claims and being honest.
Anyway, thanks again. I got a free trip and a nice month staying in Spain. 🙂
Eduardo Ferreyra
President
Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology

There are several flaws in the paper by Anderregg et al.
First of all, the paper confuses research with what Thomas Kuhn called normal science. Although some climatologists do not publish as much as others, they can have a broad knowledge of climatology. Meteorologists or climatologists who apply climatology to make weather or climate predictions may not publish but they definitely know climatology. They know the limitations of numerical simulations since they use the models. The paper oversimplifies the AGW issue by associating climatologists who are unconvinced of the evidence (UE) of AGW with skeptics. Also, most papers published on climate are not focused on sub-topics which deal directly with for example on the sensitivity of climate models to CO2 forcing. Climatologists who have not published on the specific topic of the sensivitity to radiative forcing by CO2 (but have a large number of publications in other areas) are no more “experts” on the question than a climatologist or meteorologist who has published less.
Secondly, this paper demonstrates the unfortunate “publish or perish” philosophy which started to appear in the 80’s as research funds were getting scarcer. Researchers want to be the first to publish their results. They also have a tendency to “oversell” the problems which they want to address to get grants. Practitioners, such as applied climatologists who do mostly climate predictions or meteorologists are less concerned with publications. They get paid to make predictions. Since progress in research is done by concentrating in narrow fields, climatologists who want to publish a lot have to specialize and often don’t have a broad knowledge of the field.
Thirdly, the objective of climate research, and the reason why so much money has been invested in the research, is to develop predictive tools, not only of global temperature which is an abstract number, but of local regional precipitation and temperature extremes which policy makers can use to plan remediation strategies. As seen in Realclimate there is a huge debate among climatologists about the effect of CO2 radiative forcings on hurricanes for example. Should we apply the method of Anderegg et al to decide who is right ? Should we use this method to determine which research group has the correct model sensitivity to CO2 radiative forcing? I don’t think so.

Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:04 am
The state of Climate science now is that everything other than the CO2 emissions of mankind has been eliminated and that therefore, unless this is some Divine Plan, AGW is the only possible answer.
I love how Amused applies a universal negative (something unprovable by logic). Unless you are an all knowing god how would you know that all other possibilities have been eliminated or understood?

Anderegg, et al, apparently took solace from achieving similar percentages to another publish report: “This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC”
However, here are the tenets in that report:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures
have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
I can agree with these tenets which are quite a contrast to the criteria they used in their analysis:
“Report that it is “very likely” that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been
responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average
global temperature in the second half of the 20th century.”
The anthropogenic CO2 contribution can be “significant”, without being “most”. Given the coincidence of of the positive phases of natural multidecadal climate cycles and the warming influence of the negative aerosol forcing and the warming contribution of black carbon, I would be surprised if the “very likely … most” could be justified. I haven’t seen any credible model independent evidence for it. Since we are speaking of “credentials”, let me ask a rhetorical question “What are the credentials of the models?”
The basic premise of the Anderegg paper, that active research in the climate field and the number of publications is an indicator of the credibility of the opinions expressed. Since the basic scientific issue in dispute is whether the net feedback to CO2 forcing is negative or alarmingly positive, or somewhere in between. Assuming that a credible opinion should be an informed opinion, more important than the number of articles published, would be the number of articles that were read that were relevant to net feedbacks to CO2 forcing, and, of course, whether those articles were understood. This is a comparatively small set of articles, and only a small percentage of the scientists classified by Anderegg, et al, published in this key area. The relevant publications would be in modeling, the model diagnostic literature, and the model independent attempts to estimate the climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing. Note that the there are many specialties even within the modeling and model diagnostic community, so unless a specific effort has been made, the researchers opinions may not be informed on the key issue. Perhaps Anderegg, et al, would like to argue that the relevant publications cannot be understood by anyone other than the researchers who wrote them, but I suspect that the quality of the writing is better than that, and just a basic understanding of physics and climatology is all that is required to understand most of the publications.
If the Anderegg, et al, article is used like similar articles have been in the past, we should note, that it is a leap to jump from the result that a large percentage of those publishing in climate science agreeing to the “very likely … most” statement about recent warming to the conclusion that they also accept the alarming model projections based upon IPCC CO2 forcing scenerios. It is quite possible to agree with the former, while being unconvinced that the climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing is high.

I checked the website of the author of the report for his methods of data gathering and analysis. What a joke! See:http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/index.html
The bit that really made me laugh was when he wrote “I’m not an academic . . .” and then only a couple of paragraphs later dismissed a lot of sceptical scientists by sniffily commenting that “Most of these skeptics/deniers/petition signers have little to no academic credentials in this specific field, although a handful stand out as widely published in this or a somewhat related field. ”
So let me get this straight –
The author of the study argues that we shouldn’t take the sceptical scientists seriously as they have “little to no academic credentials in [the relevant] specific field” but wants us to take his study seriously, even though he’s a computer repair-man not an academic.
PS:
I also enjoyed his defence of his scientific credentials. Apparently, whilst he has none whatsoever, he does work at a university and reads all the popular science magazines he can. What does he think this is, “Good Will Hunting?”

Amused. says:
June 23, 2010 at 7:03 pmShining a light on ignorance is frowned upon.
I’m sure we all look forward to your shining the beacon of your climate wisdom into the cavernous depths of our our ignorance. It should be amusing, if nothing else.

When I was halfway through reading the rants and raves I just had to stop and laugh when I asked myself, “What was in the story we are responding to?” Roy Spencer’s think piece got us thinking alright, just like we think when a questionable baseball call is made. We’ve got all the bluff and bluster of a sports blog going on here. Only on those blogs they use shorter words to say that the other side is full of manure, horse, chicken, or otherwise.
Yes Bruce, I was amused, by it all.

Methodological failures
Anderegg et al claim to have:
“counted the number of citations for each of the researcher’s four highest cited papers (defined here as prominence) using Google Scholar.”
1) However Prall’s actual link to Google Scholar was:
“Search only in Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science”
NOT
“Search in all subject areas.”
2) This narrower search missed my two most important publications relating to global warming/climate change, including a 330 page report:
“Application of solar thermal technologies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions”
and
“Methanol: its synthesis, use as a fuel, economics, and hazards”
which was on NTIS’s best seller list for three years.
3) The search wrongly included another researcher with my initials and last name.
4) The search ignored all my 23 patents/applications which will have the greatest impact in ways to improve energy efficiency.Include Minority Positions:
For the IPCC to be policy neutral, a critical essential reform will be to explicitly include minority positions in every section, led by specialists in those positions. Otherwise the warming activist gatekeepers will continue to exclude all contrary data, evaluations and alternatives. E.g. adaptation to climate change is likely to be much more cost effective than “cap and trade”.

ozoned’s corollary:
The probability of of godwin’s law being invoked is directly proportional to the number of bikes in the shed.
Now for the yellow badges:
Anthony, if you look at the smiley, and rotate it 90 degrees, clockwise, you get approximately:C :
That is: CO2 — or my personal preference — CO2 is good4u

Eduardo Ferreyra says:
June 23, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Congratulations Eduardo, first for being included in a so distinguished list, and for having been invited by the spanish government, quite an astonishing deed as they have made of their country the greenest and so the poorest; I am sure you will open their eyes to reality.
Here is the link to Eduardo’s page:http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Articulos.html

Inquisition and Galileo Case are subjects so full of misunderstandings and old and new falsehoods frequently reinforced by popular comments and wrong interpretations. Let’s do some reading and study in order to help to avoid the perpetuation of such errors. More and more historical research is showing the facts and their due proportion. Here is an interesting introduction: http://bit.ly/dwmiTx

“They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors.”
“The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently, because he may change it the next day.”
Eugenics and other Evils by G.K. Chesterton, 1922.
The anti-religious tone in some of the comments here is a pity, because it seems to me that the Climate Change controversy has cut across the usual science/religion constituencies. 20th Century religious commentators such as Chesterton illustrate, sometimes scathingly, that the corruption of science by power is a long-standing problem. Some of his observations seem uncannily relevant today.
“They become steadily less scientific and more official. They develop that thin disguise that is the daily wear of politicians”, The Thing (1929).
“Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. The word “kleptomania” is a vulgar example of what I mean.”
“Nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated”
Heretics (1905)

I love that spanish inquisition cartoon.
The only way it could be more relative to the global warming inquisition is if instead of the red robes of the cardinals…. they had the three monkeys of the speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil fame. 🙂

Anthony,
I love the site, and love the information you provide. However, the yellow badge comment was out of place and inappropriate.
I know too many people who had to wear yellow badges, or who’s family members did, for the comparison to have any meaning for me. They live all around me here in Israel.
Most things should never be compared to the Shoah, not Global Warming, not the Arizona Immigration law, not the slaughter of chickens for food.
I encourage you to keep doing what you’re doing, but I just felt I had to say something about that one comment.
Again, I really do appreciate your work and the site.

Jonah says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:33 amAnthony,
I love the site, and love the information you provide. However, the yellow badge comment was out of place and inappropriate.
Appropriate is ‘appropriate,’ whether you agree or otherwise.
The fact of the matter is just this: THE VERY SAME DERISION is being leveled at those of us whom disagree with the ‘status quo’ being FORCED upon us.
Who knows? Maybe in a few years the inveterate jerks pushing the AGW line of BS might just feel EMPOWERED sufficient to round up the lot of us ‘climate deniers’ and gas us out of existence as an example for everyone else.
Can’t happen here, you say?
Wanna bet?

Did anyone notice that the very first reference in this article was to Oreskes? A paper published by someone with absolutely zero background in climate science. Is this the pot calling the kettle black?

Did anyone notice that the very first paper referenced in this article is Oreskes? This is a paper written by someone with absolutely zero background in climate science. Is this the pot calling the kettle black?

Geology is an eclectic science. As an old practitioner, I recognized the thin ice supporting AGW the moment I read the Kyoto Protocols, as by someone who knew little about our world’s climate history. It demonized CO2 by the fact that man’s use of fossil fuels released some of this vital (to plant growth) gas into the atmosphere. It has to be the huge outlay of funds supporting research designed to support this shoddy hypothesis that has corrupted so many scientists into unscientific behavior. My chief concern is the ignoring of the fact that Earth is in a glacial climate mode with iced up poles and has been for the past 14 million years. Recently (earth time) we lapsed into a series of 5 intermittent continental, 100,000 year glaciations N of the 40th parallel in N. America and have been been in the 5th interglacial, termed the Holocene, for the past 12,000 years. The unnatural desire of our Greens to preserve our polar ice and the worlds port cities by maintaining a subnormal world climate, I believe is to endanger mankind to the eventual onslaught of another glaciation. The reality is our weak sun needs all the help it can get from those maligned Greenhouse gases our politicians are so interested in controlling. Should they succeed by beggaring the world I would not bet a plugged nickel on man’s future. Personally, I feel that safety can only be attained with maintaining a healthy GHG, and adding another 2 or 3 deg C to the world climate.

I think the general public has got the hang of AGW rubbish. Next it will be the deviant scientists who have supported it for its lavish research grants. The stupid politicos and Greenies who have been its cash cow will be the last to learn the folly of believing big mouth Al who was in it for all he could make out of windmills and solar panels. And the media support will have lost most of its credibility for totally misunderstanding the biggest scam that ever sullied the world of science.

I think the term”denier” should be applied to those who have at one time or another bought into the hockey stick paper and thus denied the Medieval Warm period. If holocaust deniers are those who hold peculiar views in the face of overwhelming physical and historical evidence to the contrary it much better describes MWP deniers than AGW skeptics. Deniers in this more appropriate sense would include of course Mann, Jones, Al Gore and the scientists who advised him on his documentary as well as all those scientists who endorsed IPCC III which highlighted these deniers magnus opus.

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